[somethoughts]

I've been generally curious about the benefits of the humanoid robot form factor.

I'll admit I don't know much about the state of the enterprise robotics/automation market but it would seem like the market would be limited by the fact that: 1.) The companies able to afford such robots would have much higher throughput capacity requirements and would want to setup much more customized automation. 2.) The companies in the sweet spot in terms of lower throughput capacity requirements would not be able to afford the upfront cost of such robots.

I think the primary use case would be perhaps if these could actually get in the sub $100K-$150K range end cost wise which seems a bit far off given the complexity I'm seeing here. Perhaps the idea is to go for the long game?

It feels like a version with just the top half of the humanoid would be more interesting if it could cut costs particularly since this thing likely needs to be tethered for reliable power and communications in a factory automation setting.

[panick21_]

It seems a bit strange that Tesla can build multiple electrics cars for 150k$ but the robot that consists of much less material should cost that much.

The car has lots of compute power, likely they are sharing things with the car. The car has 5 cameras and a host of other sensors as well.

The car also requires the cost of a huge battery and tons of materials plus a lot of manual work for the interiors, plus cooling and so on.

Yes the robot has a lot more actuators and complex mechanical pieces but is that gone cost as much as 2 full cars?

What complexity do you think would be so costly here?

[mlindner]

> It seems a bit strange that Tesla can build multiple electrics cars for 150k$ but the robot that consists of much less material should cost that much.

Cars are only cheap because of massive economies of scale. This robot will probably be hand assembled, making it obviously quite expensive. Not to mention the need to recoup a lot the R&D investment money over relatively few units.

[panick21_]

But that was the whole premise of Tesla investment in this bot. They don't want to produce 2, the want to produce a lots of them. They already produce the electronics in the millions, and have supply contract for cameras and so on.

Tesla is vertically integrated into producing most of the electronics (including the engine) in the car and in the charging networks. They also design products to be manufactured efficiently.

This suggests that they should be able to mass produce actuators and put those robots together efficiently. Musk looks at mass manufacture as part of the product development. However in the end this relies on enough demand being out-there so that its worth continuing the scale up of manufacturing lines.

It will likely take a many more iteration for this to be more then a tech demo.

[somethoughts]

Agree - I think it will be interesting to watch to see if it becomes more like the Tesla Model 3/Y or is more like the Tesla Semi/FSD/Cybertruck.

[somethoughts]

Yes the hand alone seems complex/intricate enough such that it'd pretty expensive to assemble/repair - whether using human or humanoid workers.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/tesla-robo...

[migueloller]

I believe their target price is $20k. No idea if it costs that right now, I doubt it.

[somethoughts]

I did see that.

It'd be interesting if one of the Tesla car teardown YouTubers (i.e. Munro, Engineering Explained) did an Optimus humanoid robot first principles teardown.